Friday Mashup (10/16/09)

I really try not to waste everyone’s time with trying to refute the nonsense of some of the right-wing media’s most visible suspects, but I have to say something about a certain Flush Limbore being denied a shot at owning the St. Louis Rams football team.

As noted here, this has provided an opportunity to assorted culprits in the wingnutosphere to claim that Flush lost out because of “political correctness,” resurrecting some quotes that may have been falsely attributed to him (such as supposedly claiming that James Earl Ray deserved a posthumous Medal of Honor and slavery keep the streets safe…or something).

Yes, well, I have an extremely hard time feeling sympathy for an individual who used some really cowardly code language to criticize Donavan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles (I’ve gotten ticked off at McNabb in the past, speaking for only myself, but I would never imagine that there was a “social concern” in somehow allowing him to become a top-flight NFL quarterback). And for more supposedly “color-blind” Limbore commentary, click here.

Also, aside from his typical race-baiting antics, Limbore seems to have a preoccupation with a particular portion of the anatomy (Salon.com took note of that here; I’ll merely let you choose to read the incidents in question for yourself, dear reader, to find out how truly odious an individual he is).

Beyond all of this, sportswriter Dave Zirin of The Nation tells us the following here (from HuffPo)…

(Flush’s) ownership group, led by St. Louis Blues boss Dave Checketts, dumped Rush without ceremony or pity. Checketts issued a statement saying, “It has become clear that his involvement in our group has become a complication and a distraction to our intentions; endangering our bid to keep the team in St. Louis. As such, we have decided to move forward without him and hope it will eventually lead us to a successful conclusion.”

His comments came the day after Rush insisted on his show that they would fight this to the bitter end. But Checketts, like most owners a long time donor to right wing causes, had no desire to link arms with Limbaugh for a public crusade. You might think Rush would have gone on the air to slam Checketts’s absence of a spine. You might think he would have called out the hypocrisy of NFL owners who give prodigiously to right wing candidates and causes, but insist on doing it in the shadows. You might think he would rail against those who see their conservative support as something sordid and best done behind closed doors. You might think Rush would howl at the moon at those who think that being an open, unreconstructed right winger, actually hurts the almighty bottom line. You might think he would say that the right wing has failed a major test by refusing to back him. Or maybe you might think he would take a different tack and accept personal responsibility for why a group of billionaires wouldn’t want his presence affecting their bottom line.

But no.

Flush “accept personal responsibility”? That makes about as much sense as the Eagles continuing to run that idiotic “wildcat” formation with Michael Vick, which, thus far, has generated comic relief but not much else.

This Op-Ed on the Fix Noise site from Doug Schoen tells us the following…

The White House is making a profound political mistake by targeting Fox News and deliberately deciding to exclude them from interviews and access to the administration. And not only that, they are making a mistake on both a practical and a political level.

Frankly, it just doesn’t make sense.

Actually, what doesn’t make sense here is Schoen’s supposition that the White House intends to cut off access to the “news network”; as White House Communications Director Anita Dunn pointed out here…

“Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again… when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition.”

And here is more Schoen shilling for his corporate “betters” by the way (so he definitely knows about “profound political mistakes” – and it gets better with Schoen)…

Fox News’ news programs are straightforward.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Most importantly, Fox News’ audience involves a substantial number of independents and moderate Republicans who should have access to, and might be persuaded by, some of the administration’s arguments. To simply believe that you can target Democrats and some of the independents through the rest of the mainstream media, and write off an audience of between two and four million people, is just plain illogical.

I love the way that Schoen basically assumes that the “blogosphere” (still don’t like that word, but can’t think of a better one) doesn’t exist, as if our corporate media is the only means by which voters can be accessed.

And if you want to get an idea as to exactly why the Obama White House would look upon Fix Noise this way, I think this story gives a bit of a hint (and I think you can consider this as a response to Dunn’s entirely accurate comments, by the way).

This week I introduced the Fairness in Representation Act, legislation that requires the Census Bureau to determine the number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

The decennial census is not currently required to collect data regarding the legal status of immigrants in the U.S. This means that states with high numbers of illegal immigrants stand to gain additional seats in Congress in the once-every-10-years process of reapportionment. This also means that the law-abiding residents of states with low numbers of illegal immigrants stand to lose seats to those states with high numbers of illegal immigrants.

That is not fair and equal representation in Congress.

Sooo…basically, because the Repugs couldn’t get their act together on immigration reform when they ran Congress, they decided to “punt” the whole issue of trying to find out exactly how many illegal immigrants we have in this country to the Census Bureau.

Nice; also, this USA Today story tells us about the obstacles that Senate Repugs “Diaper Dave” Vitter and Bob Bennett ran into when they tried to do the same thing as Foxx, namely as follows…

The amendment comes less than six months before 2010 Census questionnaires are mailed to 135 million households. About 425 million forms have already been printed, according to the bureau. Some are in different languages; others are duplicates that will go to houses that do not respond to the first mailing.

The Census Bureau is launching an outreach campaign to persuade Americans that next year’s national head count will be a simple, painless process.

The “Take 10” campaign promotes the idea that the Census form has only 10 questions and should take just 10 minutes to answer. Adding questions would require designing new forms. “It’s operationally impossible,” says Steve Jost, Census associate communications director. “The forms are printed, folded. We have bilingual forms. … We’re printing 1.5 million forms a day.”

…

Some Latino groups such as the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders are calling for immigrants to boycott the Census unless laws are changed to give those here illegally a chance to gain legal status.

“Already the public fears that the Census is too intrusive,” says Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which opposes both the amendment and the boycott.

“Asking about citizenship status “would raise more questions in the public mind about how confidential the Census is,” Vargas says.

Just file this under another failed attempt at intelligent governance by this country’s minority political party in Washington, D.C. (and God help any illegals who could be victims of hate crime, since Foxx has an awful record on that score too, as noted here).